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THE TRIBUNE SPECIALS
50 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE
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W O R L D

Talks fail, rebels set to storm Gaddafi bastion
North of Bani Walid (Libya), September 5
Libyan forces today awaited orders to storm a desert town held by fighters loyal to Muammar Gaddafi after negotiations failed to dislodge them from one of the deposed leader’s remaining bastions.

Somalia famine spreads
Nairobi, September 5
Famine spread to a sixth southern Somalia region and will likely extend further in the coming four months, the United Nations said today. “Acute malnutrition and the rate of crude mortality have surpassed famine thresholds in the Bay region of southern Somalia,” the UN Somalia Food Security Nutrition Analysis Unit said in a statement.

Seoul plotting to destroy us: N Korea
Seoul, September 5
North Korea accused capitalist South Korea today of plotting to destroy its socialist system and said the policy was pushing relations to the brink of war. According to a statement on Pyongyang’s official news agency, relations have become so confrontational they are on “the brink of war” because of the Seoul government’s policy of “unification through absorption”.


EARLIER STORIES


Scuffles disrupt Mubarak trial 
Cairo, September 5
Cops detain a TV cameraman during clashes with anti-Mubarak demonstrators in Cairo. Supporters and opponents of deposed Egyptian leader Hsni Mubarak scuffled today inside and outside the court staging his trial on charges of corruption and killings of protesters, and a top police officer delivered the first witness testimony.



Cops detain a TV cameraman during clashes with anti-Mubarak demonstrators in Cairo. — Reuters

 

Elephants eat fruits during a buffet as a part of the annual King’s Cup elephant polo tournament at Hua Hin in Thailand on Monday. The tournament, which is held to promote elephant conservation, is taking place
Jumbo treat: Elephants eat fruits during a buffet as a part of the annual King’s Cup elephant polo tournament at Hua Hin in Thailand on Monday. The tournament, which is held to promote elephant conservation, is taking place 
from September 5 to 11. — AFP 

Indian student exploited at workplace in Oz
Melbourne, September 5
In a latest case of foreign students experiencing alleged workplace exploitation in Australia, an Indian student employed at a kebab shop here was not paid dues amounting to more than 50,000 dollars. Osman Mohammed worked at Ali Baba Kebabs and Wraps at Southland Shopping Centre for 13 months until May 2009. Documents lodged in a court alleged that he was not paid at all for his first three months of work. Mohammed was employed as a dependent on his wife’s student visa and that allowed him to legally work for only 20 hours a week. It has been claimed that he worked up to 70 hours a week and was paid a flat rate of 290 dollars a week after his first three months. — PTI 






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Talks fail, rebels set to storm Gaddafi bastion

North of Bani Walid (Libya), September 5
Libyan forces today awaited orders to storm a desert town held by fighters loyal to Muammar Gaddafi after negotiations failed to dislodge them from one of the deposed leader’s remaining bastions.

Military units under Libya’s interim council are trying to winkle pro-Gaddafi forces out of Bani Walid, 150 km (southeast of Tripoli, as well as the coastal city of Sirte and a swathe of territory stretching far into the desert interior.

“The door is still open for negotiations. Our offer still stands,” said Mohammed al-Fassi, a field commander for the National Transitional Council (NTC), outside the town.

“The offer is that people who committed crimes in Gaddafi’s name will be put under house arrest until the new government is formed. Some of them have accepted this but others said no.”

Asked whether the NTC was considering taking Bani Walid by force, Fassi said: “There is no other option”.

A flurry of weekend talks with Bani Walid tribal elders failed to make headway and that effort appears to be over.

“As chief negotiator, I have nothing to offer right now. From my side, negotiations are finished,” Abdallah Kanshil said at a checkpoint some 60 km outside Bani Walid.

“They said they don’t want to talk, they are threatening everyone who moves. They are putting snipers on high-rise buildings and inside olive groves, they have a big fire force. We compromised a lot at the last minute,” he said.

It would be up to the NTC to decide what to do next, he added. “I urge Gaddafi’s people to leave the town alone.”

NTC officials have suggested that sons of Gaddafi or even the former leader himself may be hiding in Bani Walid, which like other besieged towns is cut off from normal communications. The region around Bani Walid is traditionally pro-Gaddafi. In the nearby town of Tarhouna, Gaddafi-era green flags were still flying not far from the NTC’s red, green and black flags.

NTC forces have also closed in on Gaddafi’s birthplace in Sirte.

Ahmed Bani, an NTC military spokesman in Benghazi, said negotiations were continuing with elders and tribes, but added: “The time is coming when talk is done with and we will enforce our will upon liberating the city of Sirte.” — Reuters 

Chinese sold arms to dictator: Report

Toronto: China offered huge stockpiles of weapons to prop up Gaddafi during the final months of the regime, compounding pressure on Beijing’s brittle ties with the rebels who have ousted him. State-controlled Chinese arms firms offered to sell weapons worth about $200 million to Gaddafi in July and held secret talks on shipping them to Algeria and South Africa, the Canadian daily Globe and Mail reported. However, China denied the report. — Agencies

Rendition claims: Cameron for probe

London: Allegations that British intelligence agency MI6 was involved in the rendition of Libyan terror suspects should be examined by an independent inquiry, Prime Minister David Cameron has said. A spokesman for Cameron said that the existing Detainee Inquiry into rendition was "well placed" to investigate the allegations. The inquiry is headed by Sir Peter Gibson, a judge who also serves as the intelligence services commissioner. — PTI 

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Somalia famine spreads

Nairobi, September 5
Famine spread to a sixth southern Somalia region and will likely extend further in the coming four months, the United Nations said today.

“Acute malnutrition and the rate of crude mortality have surpassed famine thresholds in the Bay region of southern Somalia,” the UN Somalia Food Security Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) said in a statement.

“Assuming current levels of response continue, famine is expected to spread further over the coming four months,” the statement added.

The Bay area, which includes the major town of Baidoa, is a stronghold of hardline Islamist Shebab insurgents who have imposed severe restrictions on aid into the areas they control.

“Tens of thousands of people have already died, over half of whom are children,” the statement added.

Famine was first declared in the southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle regions of southern Somalia in July.

It later spread to three further areas, including into the Somali capital Mogadishu and the Afgoye corridor, the world’s largest camp for displaced people.

“In total, 4 million people are in crisis in Somalia, with 750,000 people at risk of death in the coming four months in the absence of adequate response.” Some 12.4 million people in the Horn of Africa, including parts of Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Uganda, are affected by the worst drought in decades in the region and are in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the UN. — AFP 

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Seoul plotting to destroy us: N Korea

Seoul, September 5
North Korea accused capitalist South Korea today of plotting to destroy its socialist system and said the policy was pushing relations to the brink of war.

According to a statement on Pyongyang’s official news agency, relations have become so confrontational they are on “the brink of war” because of the Seoul government’s policy of “unification through absorption”.

The statement, from a spokesman for the foreign ministry’s Disarmament and Peace Institute, said Seoul’s conservative rulers had reneged on previous agreements in principle to reunify under a federal system.

The current strategy aimed to disable the North’s nuclear deterrent, “force it into opening and destroy it in the end,” the spokesman said.

It was prompted by the Seoul government’s “sinister intention” to see its neighbour’s system collapse.

The statement, using language often employed by Pyongyang, said Seoul’s efforts to win international support for unification through absorption are “a declaration of a war” against the North.

The South’s conservative President Lee Myung-Bak has stressed the need to prepare for reunification of the peninsula, which has been formally divided since 1948. He has proposed a tax in the South to prepare for such an event.

In June, Lee said unification “won’t take such a long time” but did not elaborate. — AFP 

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Scuffles disrupt Mubarak trial 

Cairo, September 5
Supporters and opponents of deposed Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak scuffled today inside and outside the court staging his trial on charges of corruption and killings of protesters, and a top police officer delivered the first witness testimony.

The police had to break up a tussle inside the chamber between some of the scores of lawyers on hand, plaintiffs and supporters of Mubarak, toppled in a popular uprising in February and in hospital since April with heart problems and other ailments.

The 83-year-old Mubarak, who was wheeled on a gurney into a metal defendants’ cage in the court, is the first Arab leader to stand trial in person since street unrest erupted across the Middle East earlier this year.

Judge Ahmed Refaat banned live television coverage of the trial in the Police Academy in Cairo after the first two sessions when Egyptians watched riveted as their former president lay behind bars.

Inside the court, people present said a fight broke out when a Mubarak supporter lifted up a photo of the former president, angering relatives of victims of the uprising. Lawyers for plaintiffs also entered the fray. The police stepped in to separate them, those in court said.

Outside, anti-Mubarak protesters hurled stones at police lines and some officers threw rocks back. Scuffles between pro and anti-Mubarak demonstrators and police also marred the two previous trial sessions. — Reuters 

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